EXTRAIT

In the island towns the old life goes on : church suppers, town meetings, schools and school sports — so little different in essence from the life of the generations gone. Some — sociologists maybe — would make distinctions, stressing the basic changes modern technological advances have made ; and the sociologists would be right. Drugstore now close at six instead of ten — for television has tolled the groups of bystanders and late-stayers into homes instead of stores. The downtown stores have no cast-iron stoves with elderly men sitting around, smoking, sometimes talking, sometimes keeping comfortable silence. A time came when the older generation stayed home after supper and the younger generations, in new freedom, walked around downtown, stood on the corner in front of the drugstore or in the drugstore itself. Or, as views broadened and the automobile age evolved, the young people drove on the endless night errand of the young, arriving nowhere but home again at last. Civilization has changed again, progressed, moved on, adopted the new patterns of convenience, settled into habits of its own age ; and Martha's Vineyard is involved as all other places in this age and this civilization ; yet it retains its flavor, purposes, character. Its basic challenges and decisions rest in the balance between man and nature, sea and shore, as in the time of the  whaling captains. Modern yet not modern, ancient yet not ancient, the island's contradictions are themselves an elusive but genuine expression of an undefeated insularity. ☐ p. 70